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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoSkip Peterson | For the DispatchA risky procedure — a last-ditch effort before going on a heart-transplant list — paid off for Parker, held by mom Courtney McGrew. He is 5 months old today.

Parker
McGrew’s heart rate was alarming — 287 beats a minute, almost twice normal — when he arrived at
Nationwide Children’s Hospital in late November.

Parker
and his twin brother, Ethan, were healthy when they were born in September to Courtney and Joe
McGrew of Dayton. But in the weeks preceding his hospitalization, Parker had been vomiting and had
become so ill that he couldn’t keep down Pedialyte.

Mrs.
McGrew was at her mother’s house in Columbus when she decided to take Parker to Doctors Hospital.
It wasn’t long before doctors there sent Parker to Children’s, where the severity of his illness
became clear.

“
They told us he was having heart failure on the left side,” Mrs. McGrew said.

An
electrical disturbance in his atrium was making his heart race. Doctors tried medications to
restore normal rhythm, but within hours his heart slowed down so dramatically that a medical team
rushed in to resuscitate Parker.

After
working on him for about an hour, doctors explained that Parker must be put on an extracorporeal
membrane oxygenation machine, or ECMO, which serves as a stand-in for the heart and lungs.

Ideally,
Parker’s time on ECMO would give him time to recover, and the heart problem would resolve itself,
said cardiologist Dr. Christina Phelps.

When
Mr. McGrew arrived at the hospital from a business trip in Michigan, a doctor explained that Parker
had a rhythm problem called atrial tachycardia and that his heart was failing.

“
The first thing I’m thinking is ‘transplant,’” Mr. McGrew said.

Doctors
were thinking the same thing, but transplantation is something they try to avoid if they can. But
Parker was desperately ill. Most babies with atrial tachycardia are easily treated with medication
and are fine by the time they celebrate their first birthday.

After
starting ECMO, doctors made a hole in his heart, between the top two chambers, to try to encourage
flow from the left to right upper chambers. And after several days, they tried to wean him off the
machine.

His
heart still wasn’t strong enough. All the usual things weren’t working.

“
Parker sort of took the book, threw it out the window and burned it,” said electrophysiologist Dr.
Naomi Kertesz.

She
and her colleagues considered one other option worth a try before adding Parker’s name to the
heart-transplant list.

Kertesz
would thread a catheter from a vein in Parker’s leg into his heart and apply heat to a 1- to
2-millimeter spot. If she burned the right cells, the problem would cease.

But
it was a risky procedure.

“
The atrium of an infant is almost like tissue paper,” Kertesz said. Too much heat could burn a
hole through Parker’s heart.

Parker
was on medication to prevent blood clots — a risk of ECMO. So if there was an injury to the heart,
bleeding could be fatal.

Furthermore,
nobody makes a catheter designed for an infant heart, so Kertesz had to maneuver into an acorn-size
atrium with a tool designed for a tangerine-size space. On top of that, she was headed for an
especially difficult-to-reach spot.

“
We were all very worried for Parker. It’s a very dangerous procedure and most people are very
reticent to do it in infants,” Phelps said.

Kertesz
said she would try as long as a surgeon was present and ready to open Parker’s chest should she
poke a hole in his heart.

“
She didn’t sugarcoat anything,” Mr. McGrew said of Kertesz. “She said, ‘I’m not sure if this will
fix the problem, but it’s a good option and it’s very dangerous.’”

There
was no promise a heart would come in time for Parker. Each day on ECMO carries more risk of
life-threatening complications.

As
she walked into the catheterization lab, Kertesz remembers just wanting Parker to be OK, and
wondering, “What the heck am I thinking?”

It
worked.

“
I was just ecstatic,” she said. “I have four children. I can’t even imagine what (the McGrews)
were going through, and to be able to come out there and say, ‘We got it.’ It’s why you do what you
do."

Parker
recovered faster than anyone expected. He’s home, happy and healthy. When he reunited with Ethan,
they held hands and slept for almost three hours.

Mr.
McGrew called his son’s medical team “miracle workers.”

His
wife put it a little differently: “Parker is our miracle. It’s just that God put the right angels
in his corner to help him through it.”